Time

When you sleep for 20 minutes every 4 hours you’re never really out of the game. Time never hits the pause button.

Sleeping for 8 hours a night is already starting to seem strange. Why would we willingly take ourselves out of the equation for such an extended period of time?

There seems to be two ways of looking at days when you live like this. The first is that days cease to exist and is replaced by a practically uninterrupted stream of consciousness. The second (which is more where I am at right now) is that each “day” is now 4 hours, instead of 24. So I’m sleeping every day, but I now have 2,190 days per year.

It’s an interesting concept that I’m going to ponder upon further.

I’ve also revised my plan slightly, upon a better understanding of the mechanics of the system. I’m now setting my timer to 25 minutes. The plan calls for 20 minutes of sleep every 4 hours. But it takes a few minutes to relax enough to fall asleep. It also takes the pressure off a bit – sometimes I’ve had to fight back a feeling resembling panic and frustration that I wasn’t falling asleep straight away. You just have to let it go, but I don’t want to worry about precious seconds slipping away while I fight it off.

I know all too well what happens if I take too long to go to sleep. Like today, I had problems falling asleep at 8pm which caused a slump that has flowed on past the midnight sleep til now (3am). I probably only got 10 minutes at 8pm. The reason was I helped Cat’s brother out at lawschool. He had a trial advocacy competition on for which he needed to provide a witness. I didn’t get home til 8:20 after an intense cross examination followed by a 20 minute drive home. These all combined so I was far from sleepy when I got home.

As an aside, I am very pleased with my levels of focus, coherence and alertness. I also seem to have overcome my reduced co-ordination that developed on the first day.

Comments

That’s so cool!! I know on the few occasions I’ve pulled an all-nighter, the idea of ‘days’ has felt weird as the last one never formally ended in my mind. I’m just trying to imagine that – but x 90!! Incredible!!

I still can’t believe you said yes to helping out even when you knew it was going to affect your sleep times so early on in the challenge. Okay, knowing you, I’m not actually surprised – but I’m so intrigued at how well you are concentrating and functioning. That poor law student had no idea what hit them when they tried to cross-examine you!

Great idea about giving yourself that extra 5 min to make sure you get your maximum sleep time. I like how you’ve approached the challenge with the idea of using it as something to improve yourself with, rather than a ‘check out what i’m doing and i’m sticking to the original plan,’ therefore refusing to adjust things if necessary. You look like a different person to the last few mornings (although i’m still amazed at how well you looked on those days!) – today you look like your normal bubbly self, although you’re up before me! I love it!! 😀

Wow! I’d love to hook you up and see what happens over the 24hrs with your sleep architecture – whether you jump straight into REM sleep in some of your sleeps and SWS in others and what your percentage of lighter sleep is over the 24 hrs. Fascinating – and you’re feeling like mental grogginess is now resolving and feeling sharp at your work?